Wars of choice

Once it starts, a nuclear war will result in the destruction of the entire planet.

He’s the commander-inchief of the “war” on drugs and drops the word “kill” so often some think that’s the limit of his English vocabulary. He’s the last person in these isles of violence one would expect to be a pacifist. But he sounded like one last April 9.

Speaking at the Mount Samat National Shrine in Bataan during the 75th anniversary of the fall of that province to the Japanese in 1942, President Rodrigo Duterte told his audience of government officials and foreign dignitaries that “no matter the spoils, war is never worth it.” Although that sounded as if he was referring to all wars, he was apparently thinking only of wars of aggression, a word he indeed used in a subsequent remark, and as suggested by his use of the word “spoils.”

Renamed “Araw ng Kagitingan” (Day of Valor ), the surrender to invading Japanese forces of the Filipino and American defenders of Bataan and their subsequent incarceration in internment camps in Tarlac to which they were forced to march in what has come to be known as the Bataan Death March helped assure the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. The Japanese invasion was a war for resources as well as for strategic purposes; the Philippines was part of the “spoils” of the war between the United States and Japan, and, as every schoolboy should know, suffered horribly for it.

Despite Mr. Duterte’s statement, aggression for the sake of resources, territorial aggrandizement, or as a step in achieving strategic dominance, has always been lucrative for the aggressors although devastating to their victims. A resource- poor country, Japan’s war of choice in the Pacific enabled it to access the raw materials it needed for its armaments factories, and incidentally also enriched its military contractors and the Zaibatsu ruling elite. Germany’s conquest of much of Europe assured it essentially the same access to the resources, both